I received that PM and replied to it the same day. But when checking now I see that there's a c*ck-up - the reply has been sent to an other user that I've never exchanged PMs with before... Don't know what happened there, looks like a forum bug actually. I will resend the PM in a couple of minutes.

FYI, the MonSTer board is fully supported in EmuTOS 0.9.7 (thanks to joska's contribution ). It includes built-in IDE driver and Alt-RAM support.Even if you don't want to use EmuTOS as main OS, you can easily use it temporarily. It might help to debug other stuff.Just get emutos-prg-*.zip there, and run EMUTOS.PRG from floppy or hard disk:https://sourceforge.net/projects/emutos ... tos/0.9.7/

Note: Some of your AUTO programs may be incompatible with EmuTOS. If it is the case, just press Control at the EmuTOS welcome screen to bypass any autorun and boot straight to desktop.

joska: yes, I've tested flasher for a while. It generally works on MSTe (no crashes etc..). I've managed to flash hacked by GGN tos 4.04 (it worked, but I couldn't boot drive from ascsi (Ultrasatan)) and atari logo scrolled sideways during boot.Tos 2.06 works fine (, but I'm not sure if it was already flashed).I've tried latest EmuTOS, but I've got issues with booting from ASCSI/Ultrasatan - sometimes it hangs on screen detecting ultra satan [012 ...] etc. After few soft resets I've managed to get to EmuDesk. But it still has some issues. Sometimes tos partitions cannot be opened (mixed tos/dos opened fine) sometimes they are accessible. I've got strang problem with flashing tos 1.62uk. I cannot boot from it. It booted only once when I've used reset button in flash program and switched banks after that. When I turned machine off and on after that. I've got white screen, disc drive flashes (or is turned on always i don't remember) and desktop doesn't show up, no booting from ascsi.

Choosing banks for flash in still eludes me. And I think that I cannot use it reliably Which banks should I choose to let's say flash tos 2.06, kaostos, tos 1.62 ?

saulot wrote:Choosing banks for flash in still eludes me. And I think that I cannot use it reliably Which banks should I choose to let's say flash tos 2.06, kaostos, tos 1.62 ?

There are three jumpers on the MonSTer that affects this. From the left:

TOSSEL - if connected to ground the ST boots from address E00000, i.e. the default address for TOS 2 and upwards (including "clones" like EmuTOS 256kb and MagiC! ROMs). This is also the default address in the STE, even if you're using TOS 1.6! When connected to 3.3V the system boots from address FC0000. This applies to TOS 1.00 to 1.04, KaosTOS and EmuTOS 192kb.

FLASHSW - switch between the two flash-banks. You can have one 256kb/E00000 image and one 192kb/FC0000 image (see above) in each bank.

FLASHON - connect to ground to enable flash. Connect to 3.3V to disable flash. If you disable flash you can boot from the original ROMs. However, the original ROMs must be removed or disabled when booting from flash.

The MonSTer logic reads the switches at reset, but my experience is that I often have to powercycle the ST to switch bank/TOS.

joska: I get the overall idea of switching banks and slots by hardware buttons (this is explained well in readme).. But how those memory regions of a flasher (0x900000, 0x800000 .. etc) relate to corresponding banks and slots? For me as user those adresses are meaningless. Instead of those adresses would it be possible to display additional information like: Bank 0, Slot 0, Bank 0, Slot 1, Bank 1, Slot 0, Bank 1, Slot 1 or something similar.Second thing, would be possible add possibility to erase given bank with dummy image (displaying simple information like 'unused/erased bank')?

saulot wrote:But how those memory regions of a flasher (0x900000, 0x800000 .. etc) relate to corresponding banks and slots?

They don't relate to banks and slots at all. It's just the address used by the MonSTer to access the flash when WRITING. The default can be used in most cases, but some extra hardware - mostly graphics cards - are using that address range and in that case you have to use another (lower) address instead. But the flasher software attempts to autodetect this and selects a working flash address itself. In some cases there just isn't any free address range to write to the flash, usually on the MSTE were a big chunk of the address range is spent on the VME bus. In that case you will have to reboot with less or no alt-RAM enabled, freeing up some addressing space.

What matters is the "offset" address. This is an offset from the start of the bank (remember, there is only one bank available for writing and that's always the one you're not booting from) and specifies where in the bank the image is written to. But this is automatically set when you load a TOS image. The only time you as a user needs to fiddle with this is when you write an image that is not a TOS or TOS replacement.

saulot wrote: For me as user those adresses are meaningless.

Indeed, but they are not indented to be used by average users but "power users" that use this flash for other things than just running the OS from.

saulot wrote: Instead of those adresses would it be possible to display additional information like:

There will be more information displayed in the final version. The contents of each slot is one of them.

joska: thank you for an explanations. I think that information should land in MonSTer readme. The erasing feature is matter of user convenience, for example when flashing OSes I have no brightest idea to which slot/bank it is flashed. If I reboot machine and set switches I don't know if it boots to badly flashed os or to not yet used region.

Yes, but I have weird results. Process goes fine. I've launched flash tool and didn't touched flash base address. Loaded/flashed kaos tos and tos 1.62uk (I assume tos goes to bank 0 slot 0, and other to bank 0 slot 1 or other way)- offsets are updated. Now when I use reset button from flasher, I switch bank with button and press reset as described. tos 1.62 boots ok. But When I turn off machine and try to reboot tos doesn't launch at all (I've got white screen and disc drive led lights is turned on and stays like this forever). Any ideas why it happens?

I've noticed silly thing about emutos. I've got bunch of partitions amd it insists on saving desktop state on floppy A, it cannot boot anything from Auto and seems to ignore hd driver. Is this how it works? Additionally cannot use flasher under EmuTOS, flash base indicates 'occupied'.

saulot wrote:I've noticed silly thing about emutos. I've got bunch of partitions amd it insists on saving desktop state on floppy A, it cannot boot anything from Auto and seems to ignore hd driver. Is this how it works?

EmuTOS has its own internal ACSI (and IDE) hard disk driver. Please do not use HDDRIVER with EmuTOS, as it will conflict. The hard disk boot sector (used for third party hard disk drivers) is ignored by EmuTOS, anyway. If you have conflicting software in your AUTO folder, please press Control at the EmuTOS welcome screen to avoid running any AUTO/ACC.

Also, on the EmuTOS welcome screen, you can select the boot device by pressing the corresponding letter: A, C, etc. By default, if C: is detected, it will be the default boot drive, where EMUDESK.INF will be saved.

saulot wrote:Yes, but I have weird results. Process goes fine. I've launched flash tool and didn't touched flash base address. Loaded/flashed kaos tos and tos 1.62uk (I assume tos goes to bank 0 slot 0, and other to bank 0 slot 1 or other way)- offsets are updated. Now when I use reset button from flasher, I switch bank with button and press reset as described. tos 1.62 boots ok. But When I turn off machine and try to reboot tos doesn't launch at all (I've got white screen and disc drive led lights is turned on and stays like this forever). Any ideas why it happens?

I've noticed silly thing about emutos. I've got bunch of partitions amd it insists on saving desktop state on floppy A, it cannot boot anything from Auto and seems to ignore hd driver. Is this how it works? Additionally cannot use flasher under EmuTOS, flash base indicates 'occupied'.

I'd recommend turning the machine off if you are changing TOS versions on the next boot because things can remain in memory via RESET.

Also, don't assume anything. You need to set jumpers after flashing to switch to the TOS version you just flashed.

You also mentioned MegaSTE in a post above. Are you trying to use KAOS TOS or TOS 1.62 on a MegaSTE ? If so, that won't work. TOS 1.x was never supported on MegaSTEs.

alanh: Yes, we are talking about MSte. I just followed on screen instructions in flasher. What I'm trying to tell is that when using soft reset after flashing 'unsupported' TOSes boot, but only once. Turning off machine and rebooting don't work 100%. I was able to boot tos 1.62 / kaos tos that way. If this won't work, then this should land in readme. I don't use jumpers, because I've wired buttons.